well-dressed foolish ideas

There are well-dressed foolish ideas, just as there are well-dressed fools.
- Sebastien Chamfort

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Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Mia talk

So at about 6 months old, the kitten is still cute. She's prone to walking around the flat while I'm here, meowing loudly, and completely ignoring my vocal reply. It's as if she wasn't talking to me in the first place.

She likes sinks, and the bath tub. Rarely does a shower not end with me stepping out of the tub, wrapped in a towel, as Mia hops over the edge of the tub and slides herself into the tub. From there, she's not yet figured out what to do, but fakes it well by sniffing around the floor of the tub and the edges near the corners.

After I brush my teeth, or after I finish washing dishes, I can't get out of the room before Mia jumps into the sink. As an example, I just finished washing my dishes from my snack this evening - let's not call it dinner, it was toast, tomatoes and cheese - and before I could dry my hands, Mia was stepping gingerly into my chrome sink. She laid down. She looked up at me and huffed as if she were telling me that I just don't know how to live properly. When I went to rinse off my hand, I opened the tap just a tiny tiny bit so that she would realize that the sink is a receptacle for water - which she's not terribly fond of. She leaped out and her feet barely hit the floor before she was out of the kitchen.

She's not fond of her water bowl. By this I don't mean she doesn't drink water, she just prefers to drink my water. From my glass. And I've noticed when she's done drinking from my glass of water, she snarfs in it. It then becomes her water.

Every time I open the fridge and she's close by, she needs to check it out. Just to see what's in there. She practically climbs inside.

Just to placate me, she seems to understand me when I say "Down" when she's gotten up on the counter. I know she's a cat and it's beyond their realm of abilities to obey, but anything's possible.

She used to (until I got smart) take used tea bags out of the garbage and, get this, break them open just to play with the grounded tea leaves. Which really just means that she likes to open tea bags and spread the tea everywhere for kicks. It's probably not as much fun to clean tea up as it is to play with the emptying bags, but that's just a guess.

This cat has a remarkable ability to be a complete pain in the ass while I'm in the kitchen making food. She attacks my legs, which proves dangerous since she's quite small still, and I either end up nearly stepping on her, or I get dangerously close to spilling something either on her or near her. I think she's conspiring for a snack. However, the pain in the ass behavior ceases once I sit down to eat anything and then she becomes the sweetest thing in the world and tries to get as close to my plate as possible. So she can have a snack. Which she never gets.

Mia likes me. And the reason that I know this is that anytime I'm under a blanket and she comes to lay on me, she licks my chin. If I move so that she isn't licking my chin anymore, she gets up from laying on me and moves so that I can't really turn my head away from her. If that doesn't prove how much she likes me, perhaps the fact that every time I come in the front door, she's sitting just far enough away from the door to allow me to come in without smacking her with the door does.

And she meows when I walk up the stairs outside my flat. I like to think of it as her very own welcoming party for me. Which indeed, it likely is.

She watches tv. From the arm of the couch. Or from a perch in front of the tv, at dangerously close distances. She's going to go crosseyed if she keeps it up.

I'm hoping to get her claws clipped tonight without losing all of my skin. Wish me luck.